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When people refer to the entire suite of Unix-like tools as “bash” I don’t quite know what to make of it. Interpreted uncharitably, it would seem to imply that

When people refer to the entire suite of Unix-like tools as “bash” I don’t quite know what to make of it. Interpreted uncharitably, it would seem to imply that they think all those nice tools like grep, awk, etc. are all shell builtins, which would be a huge red flag as it would mean they have very little idea of how a typical Unix-like OS works. Interpreted charitably, maybe they do know that those are all separate programs and know what a shell does, but they think the whole experience is called “bash” and not just the shell? Which I guess wouldn’t be as serious. Or maybe they know exactly what’s going on and are just using it as shorthand, sort of like how people use “the White House” to mean the entire US Federal Executive. I honestly am not sure which it is.

saagarjha 7y ago
I often say that I like using macOS, but what I really mean is that I like macOS itself along with its apps and ecosystem. Perhaps the same thing was meant here.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  I see your point, but I think it’s a slightly inaccurate analogy. There is no “bash ecosystem”; if you switch your login shell to zsh or fish or tcsh, nearly everything works identically. I suspect if this guy were forced to use zsh, he’d be fine; he just doesn’t because it’s not the default. Whereas when you say you “like using macOS” I assume you don’t just mean that you like using computers in general and you would have absolutely no preference for macOS over Linux or Windows.
  - jhbadger 7y ago
    Expect zsh to stop being niche in a few months when apparently the next version of MacOS will use it by default
da_chicken 7y ago
> When people refer to the entire suite of Unix-like tools as “bash” I don’t quite know what to make of it. Because nobody installs bash without coreutils and the 30 or so other common utility programs (grep, sed, awk, et al). Pointing out that bash doesn't include coreutils+standard is just being pedantic. Nobody runs a system without those utilities present. Everybody already knows what is meant. You're not adding to the meaning by requiring a comprehensive listing of core and standard utility programs. You might as well be saying, "Actually, it's not Linux. It's GNU/Linux." Only Richard Stallman cares, but even Stallman recognizes that because "a long name such as GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd, at some point you will have to set a threshold and omit the names of the many other secondary contributions." [0] Nobody is going to say, "OMG, how can you say you have a proper environment if you don't mention that you have the very important yes utility." Nobody is really interested in a required-only install of Debian or a base-only install of Red Hat or whatever because the use case for that is so rare and narrow that it's not worth contextualizing. Anybody who is doing that knows that it's a weird setup. [0]: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many
- umanwizard 7y ago
  You seem to be responding to points that I’m not making. I’m aware that very few people install bash outside the context of a typical Unix OS. It would indeed be pedantic and useless to point out that that’s theoretically possible, and that’s not what I’m doing. It’s also very rare to install, say, grep outside of a typical Unix OS. But you wouldn’t say “the grep workflow on WSL is great” to mean the entire WSL experience, unless you were specifically talking about actual grep. So why do people do it with bash?
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Because bash is the name of the Unix shell, differentiated from the traditional Windows shell.
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      Would you say “I’m using Chrome and Visual Studio” or “I’m using a Windows workflow and tools” or “I’m using explorer.exe” ? The first two make much more sense to me than the third. (As an aside, it’s not true that Bash is “the Unix shell” and it is in fact not the default on several Unix-like systems. But in fairness to your point, it is the default on most GNU/Linux distros).
shigawire 7y ago
What should it be called? Basic Unix utilities? What is correct?
- umanwizard 7y ago
  I’d say the Unix-like workflow or I’d mention the specific OS if appropriate (like Ubuntu or whatever).
dublin 7y ago
What lots of people call "Bash on Windows" is technically the "Windows Subsystem for Linux", although that's a bit of a misnomer, since it's all the usual apps from a standard distro (several common distros can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Store) but actually running directly on the Windows kernel, through an impressively fast adaptation layer that looks just like a real Linux kernel to the apps. (With the exception of a few bizarre corner cases like Dbus, but you can even make those work if you really need to.) Similar (and similarly speedy) adaptation layers provide transparent access across Linux and Windows filesystems, too - the ability to safely work bidirectionally from a windows app to the Linux filesystem and vice-versa is new in the recently pushed 1903 release of Win10. Not only does WSL work quite well, it's a bit of a righteous hack or technological marvel in its own right, especially since it makes Linux a fully equal partner in the the dev ecosystem, something the old Microsoft would never have allowed.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  I know what he means. I’m asking why it’s popularly referred to as “bash”.

saagarjha 7y ago

I often say that I like using macOS, but what I really mean is that I like macOS itself along with its apps and ecosystem. Perhaps the same thing was meant here.

umanwizard 7y ago
I see your point, but I think it’s a slightly inaccurate analogy. There is no “bash ecosystem”; if you switch your login shell to zsh or fish or tcsh, nearly everything works identically. I suspect if this guy were forced to use zsh, he’d be fine; he just doesn’t because it’s not the default. Whereas when you say you “like using macOS” I assume you don’t just mean that you like using computers in general and you would have absolutely no preference for macOS over Linux or Windows.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  Expect zsh to stop being niche in a few months when apparently the next version of MacOS will use it by default

da_chicken 7y ago

> When people refer to the entire suite of Unix-like tools as “bash” I don’t quite know what to make of it. Because nobody installs bash without coreutils and the 30 or so other common utility programs (grep, sed, awk, et al). Pointing out that bash doesn't include coreutils+standard is just being pedantic. Nobody runs a system without those utilities present. Everybody already knows what is meant. You're not adding to the meaning by requiring a comprehensive listing of core and standard utility programs. You might as well be saying, "Actually, it's not Linux. It's GNU/Linux." Only Richard Stallman cares, but even Stallman recognizes that because "a long name such as GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd, at some point you will have to set a threshold and omit the names of the many other secondary contributions." [0] Nobody is going to say, "OMG, how can you say you have a proper environment if you don't mention that you have the very important yes utility." Nobody is really interested in a required-only install of Debian or a base-only install of Red Hat or whatever because the use case for that is so rare and narrow that it's not worth contextualizing. Anybody who is doing that knows that it's a weird setup. [0]: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many

umanwizard 7y ago
You seem to be responding to points that I’m not making. I’m aware that very few people install bash outside the context of a typical Unix OS. It would indeed be pedantic and useless to point out that that’s theoretically possible, and that’s not what I’m doing. It’s also very rare to install, say, grep outside of a typical Unix OS. But you wouldn’t say “the grep workflow on WSL is great” to mean the entire WSL experience, unless you were specifically talking about actual grep. So why do people do it with bash?
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Because bash is the name of the Unix shell, differentiated from the traditional Windows shell.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Would you say “I’m using Chrome and Visual Studio” or “I’m using a Windows workflow and tools” or “I’m using explorer.exe” ? The first two make much more sense to me than the third. (As an aside, it’s not true that Bash is “the Unix shell” and it is in fact not the default on several Unix-like systems. But in fairness to your point, it is the default on most GNU/Linux distros).

shigawire 7y ago

What should it be called? Basic Unix utilities? What is correct?

umanwizard 7y ago
I’d say the Unix-like workflow or I’d mention the specific OS if appropriate (like Ubuntu or whatever).

dublin 7y ago

What lots of people call "Bash on Windows" is technically the "Windows Subsystem for Linux", although that's a bit of a misnomer, since it's all the usual apps from a standard distro (several common distros can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Store) but actually running directly on the Windows kernel, through an impressively fast adaptation layer that looks just like a real Linux kernel to the apps. (With the exception of a few bizarre corner cases like Dbus, but you can even make those work if you really need to.) Similar (and similarly speedy) adaptation layers provide transparent access across Linux and Windows filesystems, too - the ability to safely work bidirectionally from a windows app to the Linux filesystem and vice-versa is new in the recently pushed 1903 release of Win10. Not only does WSL work quite well, it's a bit of a righteous hack or technological marvel in its own right, especially since it makes Linux a fully equal partner in the the dev ecosystem, something the old Microsoft would never have allowed.

umanwizard 7y ago
I know what he means. I’m asking why it’s popularly referred to as “bash”.